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An Ancient Tree
| Article
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10461 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1993 |
1,546 Words |
| Author
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Joel Grossman
Joel Grossman is a former agricultural pest-control adviser
for the state of California. He is now a free-lance writer
living in Santa Monica, California. |
There's been much ado about the yew tree of the Pacific Northwest, the bark of which is a source of the anticancer drug taxol. But this is only the tip of the iceberg among plants promising solutions to human problems. Few plants offer the range of medicinal and pesticidal chemicals as does the neem, Azadirachta indica, a tropical evergreen tree in the mahogany family (Meliaceae).
Neem is native to arid Asian broadleaf and scrub forests. Like other mahoganies, its wood is heavy and durable, resistant to termites and fungi, and useful for fuel, furniture, and building. Neem excites natural product chemists because its bark, leaves, fruit, flower, and seed have a wider range of biologically active triterpenoid chemicals than any known plant. Also, 4,000 years of safe use dating back to India's Vedic period increase the likelihood of neem products passing tough twentieth century regulatory scrutiny.
Neem is a Hindi name dating back thousands of years to ancient India. All parts of the tree were developed into Ayurvedic medicine for home remedies and pharmaceuticals administered by a caste of nomadic mendicants, whose modern descendants, traveling physicians, still hold neem in high esteem. Traditional Hindus still chew bitter tasting neem leaves for good health on their New Year's Day, and pluck twigs to cleanse their teeth and gums. India has the world's largest neem population, an estimated 18-25 million mostly lone trees scattered around the country.
Immigrants from India, many on assignment with the British colonial civil service in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spread their beloved tree around the tropical world, from Africa and the Caribbean to remote South Pacific islands. Entomologists are the new "Johnny Appleseeds," spreading experimental plantings around the globe, because neem extracts fend off more than 200 pest species, many resistant to modern synthetic insecticides. In the United States, experimental plantings are found in frost-free areas of Florida and Southern California. Arizona breeders are trying to extend the tree's growing range into chillier areas, using seed collected in cool regions of northern India to create cold tolerant cultivars.
The world's largest neem plantation, 50,000 trees, was planted in the 1980s near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to shade Muslim pilgrims in campgrounds from the harsh desert heat. Tolerance of scorching temperatures, severe drought, and poor soil also make neem ideal for arid Africa. Lush, shady green, umbrella-like neem canopies have enveloped boulevards of West African
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